What Goes With Resurrection?

The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. - Luke 7:22

These are the words of Jesus referring to his own ministry. He’s talking about resurrection. And did you notice what it’s connected to? Look at the other phrases around ‘the dead are raised.’ Anything stand out to you?

It’s the blind, the lame, the leprous, the deaf and the poor who are part and parcel of Jesus’s teaching on people being raised from the dead. The ministry of resurrection seems to give preference to those on the margins, those in desperate need, those who are often discarded by society and rolled over by the power structures of the ‘empire’ du jour.

These are all signs of the authentic ministry of Jesus (he’s speaking these words to messengers from John the Baptist who are trying to figure out if Jesus is the real messiah). They validate that what he’s up to is the work of God.

Perhaps Easter is not just about personal salvation - maybe it’s also the authentication of Jesus’s lifelong ministry of doing justice in this world, resisting anything that dehumanizes people, and pushing back against all the evil and brokenness in the world. Are you up for joining Jesus’s kind of Easter movement?